


Visiting Hours

by meretricula



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-23
Updated: 2008-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Briar comes to visit Tris at Lightsbridge, and finds her settling in just fine. (faint, faint hint of pre-Briar/Tris, easily ignored.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elucreh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elucreh/gifts).



> Written for Elucreh

 

 

Visiting Hours

Briar would have sworn it wasn't possible, but Tris had somehow managed to find a girl even nerdier than she was to room with at Lightsbridge. He had imagined somehow that Tris would be unspeakably miserable, all alone at university, surrounded by catty upper-middle-class girls, and would give up her quest for useless academic credentials within a moon to come home. He had forgotten, or at least overlooked in his desire to have her back in Daja's house with him (especially in the kitchen - Briar was no oppressor of womankind but Tris was the only person who would make all of his favorite foods perfectly without even being asked), Tris' ability to completely block out everything around her if she had an interesting enough book. 

"Look, Smokewalker's treatise on glamours is clearly the best research for this project," Tris was saying to her roommate as Briar hovered in the doorway. She was ignoring him for the moment, engrossed in her argument, but she knew he was there - he'd done the mental equivalent of tugging on her curls as he was climbing the twelfth and last flight of the godforsaken stairs up to her room. Tris was already looking a little bit thinner from a combination of racing up and down the stairs at least twice daily, stress, and eating cooking clearly inferior to her own. "But if you want to waste your time reading _Appleblossom_ , and how he could look himself in the eye in the morning when he shaved I don't know after he picked that ridiculous name, far be from me to stop you." 

"Just because you don't like the style his footnotes doesn't make him irrelevant, Risi," Tris' roommate - who had apparently become less cowed by "Risi's" outspoken opinions since Briar's last visit - replied serenely. 

"If he could master complex illusions, he should have had the intellectual capacity for a consistent system of citations," Tris sniffed. 

"Hey, Coppercurls," Briar said, deeming this as good a time as any to come in and interrupt. Once Tris really got going on academic writing there was no shutting her up. Apparently all those years devouring the books Niko gave her had given her decided ideas on the subject, though if there was any subject Tris _didn't_ have decided ideas about, Briar had yet to find it. "Haven't smothered her in her sleep yet, Lani?" 

Lani grinned up at him; she was definitely less scared now. Maybe she'd figured out that Tris was all bark and a very gentle bite. Unless she was angry. Then her bite was liable to take off your hand. "I'm too tired to wait up until she goes to bed. _If_ she goes to bed, since I've seen no evidence of it in the past two weeks." 

"You're supposed to be looking after yourself," Briar said with a frown. "Sandry'll come after you with a wooden spoon if you don't, Tr - uh, Risi." Tris glared at him for his slip. 

"I've been writing a paper on war magic for my Ethics of Magic class," Tris said defensively. "I had to do research!" 

"Your Ethics of Magic paper was over two times the required minimum length," Lani snorted. "You brought it on yourself." 

"You're supposed to be on my side," Tris grumbled. 

"Hey, Risi, Lani!" A bespectacled boy, tall, with a prominent Adam's apple and thin as a twig, interrupted before violence could ensue. "We're heading down to that pub I told you about - do you want to come? They serve fruit juice and cider, I checked." 

"The pub?" Tris asked, raising an eyebrow. "Dantris, it's the middle of the day." 

"So it won't be weird that you're drinking fruit juice," he replied firmly. "Come on, I want to show you the enchanted mirror behind the bar." He paused, then turned to Briar. "Hey, sorry, I'm Dantris - everybody but Risi and the professors calls me Danni. I live down on the tenth floor. Are you in another dorm? I've never seen you before." 

"Briar Moss," Briar said. "I don't go to school here - I'm just visiting Risi." 

"Hey, Risi, way to go!" Danni hooted. "First on the floor with a gentleman caller!" 

"He's my brother," Tris replied dryly. 

Dantris squinted, pushed his glasses further up his nose, squinted again. "No family resemblance that I can see." 

"Foster brother," explained Lani, who'd had the same initial impression and been just as quickly corrected. 

"Ohhhhh." Dantris nodded wisely, as if that actually explained something. "Anyway, Briar, would you like to come with us? There's a pub down the street with a mirror that's enchanted to insult every person who looks in it. And it comes up with a unique, effective insult each time!" 

"That must have been one hell of an enchantment," Briar observed. "Kind of a lot of work for a prank." 

"It was the final project of one of the Lightsbridge students five years ago. But then what was he going to do with a mirror that insulted everyone, so he sold it to the pub. It's a tourist attraction now, plus the food in the pub is really good."

Briar glanced at Tris, who shrugged. "Why not," he said, speaking for them both. 

"Great!" Danni said enthusiastically. "I'll meet you outside in a quarter-bell?" He rushed out without waiting for a reply. 

*

Briar hung back a little from the group of students - Tris, Lani, Dantris, Dantris' roommate, and Ellie-not-Ellison from down the hall - as they made their way to the infamous pub. They were discussing the apparently lamentable teaching style of one of their professors. Tris seemed willing to let Danni and Ellie do most of the talking, inserting her own razor-edged comments only occasionally, so Briar reached out. _Hey, Tris, can I talk to you?_

She glanced back at him, then dropped out of the knot of her friends to come walk with him. As social maneuvers went, Briar'd seen more subtle, but coming from Tris it was a surprisingly graceful gesture. _All ears,_ she replied. 

_You seem really happy here,_ Briar said bluntly. 

She frowned thoughtfully, looking at her school friends. _They're really young,_ she said, not pretending not to understand. _They have no idea what it's like in the real world. But it's nice to pretend that I don't, either. Just for a while._

_Not for good?_

_No, I think it'll get boring eventually. I like the schoolwork for now, but sooner or later I'll have to get out and actually do magic instead of writing papers about it. Don't worry,_ she added with a mental tinge of amusement, _I'm coming home._

Briar didn't bother to respond in words, just sending her a pulse of relief and I'm-happy-that-you're-happy. She grinned up at him, and as he looked down he was struck by the sudden, completely irrelevant observation that she'd taken to wearing her necklines a lot lower since she went off the university. It was probably Ellie's influence; her dress was just as low, and it wasn't even buttoned all the way up in the front. 

"So, tell me all the gossip from home!" Tris said cheerfully. 

" _All_ the gossip? That'll take a while, Coppercurls; you've been gone for months!" he teased her. "Let's see, there are two wet-behind-the-ears idiots panting after Sandry - one of them's a count's son, not that she cares, and the other's working for her uncle's seneschal - and Daja's taken up with a barmaid..." 

 


End file.
